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Before accepting their agreements to work in Liberia in a mobile hospital for Ebola patients, I emailed each of the 68 Commissioned Corps officers of the U.S. Public Health Service that they would face danger, needed to accept certain risks, and that they would have to perform under extremely austere conditions.

Calvin W. Edwards, CAPT, U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps

Turns out, if anything, I may have underestimated the hardship.

Initially we lived 12 to a room in two-bedroom cabanas that were intended for four people and had ”septic” issues (sewage backups and overflowing toilets) to boot. We ate MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat) intended for troops in combat. Six weeks into the two-month deployment, we were moved into tents next to the mobile hospital, about 20 officers per tent.

We worked 12-hour shifts in 90 degree heat and 90 percent humidity, often wearing head-to-toe heavy layers of plastic gear that left us soaked in sweat within minutes. A single slip in protocol could expose us to a deadly virus as we worked with vomiting patients who could defecate up to three gallons of diarrhea a day and could quickly dehydrate.

The Payoff

But when the first patient emerged with a clean bill of health, the hardships were forgotten.

A Liberian physician’s assistant, a man in his 30s, was the first to walk out with a certificate documenting that two tests showed him to be virus-free.

U.S. Public Health Service officers celebrate as a Liberian man adds his handprint to a “survivors wall.” Each patient who overcame Ebola after treatment at the USPHS mobile hospital outside Monrovia was given a set of clothes and essentials and invited to mark their recovery with a handprint.

This ex-patient became the first person to dip his hand in yellow paint and make an imprint on our “survivors’ wall.” Although total numbers have not yet been released, there were more handprints to come, and more patients survived than died.

Each patient who walked out confirmed that we were correct deciding to cross an ocean to help stop the spread of Ebola. To see a once desperately sick person recover and go home, knowing we had a part in that, was more satisfying than I can describe.

We were the first group of Public Health Service officers to move to the tents that were set up as a hospital in Liberia. Our group, which I commanded, included 24 women and 45 men. I had three weeks’ notice before flying out; some in our group had as little as five days to decide and be deployed.

Since our return, two more groups of Public Health Service officers have been deployed to the hospital built in a remote area about 1.5 hours from downtown Monrovia. The final group is still there.

The Mission

Our mission was to treat health care workers who contracted the Ebola virus. Before our arrival health care workers were leaving in droves, and the volunteer pool was drying up. The creation of our treatment facility helped turn the tide.

An aerial photo shows the mobile medical compound where Public Health Service Officers treat health care workers who contract Ebola.

The Liberian Ministry of Health told us that some health care workers were waiting until we had set up the facility before agreeing to come to Liberia. The fact we had a small part in increasing the pool of workers treating desperate patients was awesome. How often in our lives do we get a chance to do something so big?

On the other hand, one of our greatest stresses was how little we could do to help defeat the virus. Often the most we could do was keep people clean and hydrated while hoping their bodies would develop antibodies.

It was especially hard emotionally when we lost a patient at night. Because Ebola patients are most infective right after they succumb to the disease, we could not risk moving them over the dimly-lighted pathway to the morgue.

The Public Health Service officers were the only people working in the hospital. They performed every job, even those most unpleasant, and did it regardless of rank, exalted skills, or letters after their names. Yet all came away happy about the role they played.

For my part, I am both humbled and intensely proud of these men and women — of their skills, dedication, selflessness, ruggedness and resiliency. I wish all Americans could share some measure of my joy.

CAPT Edwards is a Public Health Service officer who serves in FDA’s Office of Regulatory Affairs. The U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps is made up of 6,500 public health professionals who provide leadership and clinical service roles within the federal government agencies to which they are assigned.

2014 was a strong year for rare disease product development at FDA. It was also a year of significant firsts.

In recognition of Rare Disease Day, February 28th, we want to reflect on the progress we have made thus far as we renew our commitment to rare disease patients. A rare disease is generally defined as a disease which affects fewer than 200,000 Americans a year. At FDA, the commitment to increase access to diagnostics and treatments to change the day-to-day reality of those living with rare diseases began over 30 years ago with the passage of the Orphan Drug Act.That commitment has steadily increased since then.

In 2014, we received our highest number to date of new requests for orphan drug designation. We received over 440 requests while just 7 years ago, we received less than half of that. We designated and approved more orphan drugs in 2014 than we had in previous years – nearly 300 drugs were designated and 48 were approved, including both novel and repurposed drugs. In 2014, 41% of all novel new drugs approved by the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research were for the treatment of rare diseases. Many of these orphan drug approvals were new and innovative, including Sylvant, to treat Castleman’s disease, which results in excessive lymph node growth, and Impavido, to treat forms of the tropical disease, leishmaniasis.

2014 was also a year of firsts for rare disease product development:

There were firsts in device development. For example, the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research approved its first device through the Humanitarian Device Exemption (HDE) pathway. This device, CliniMACS CD34 Reagent System, helps to mitigate potentially serious immune reactions associated with stem cell transplantation in patients with acute myeloid leukemia.

FDA produced in 2014 its first agency-wide blueprint to accelerate the development of therapies for pediatric rare diseases – a report and strategic plan outlining how to address issues for developing products for this population.

2014 saw the issuance of the first rare pediatric disease priority review voucher for the treatment of mucopolysaccharidosis type IVA (Morquio A syndrome), a rare lysosomal storage disease which affects about 1000 patients in the United States and can lead to debilitating and life-threatening abnormalities of bones, joints and the heart.

In recognition of Rare Disease Day 2015, the international rare disease community is coming together to pay tribute to the millions of individuals impacted by rare diseases all over the world. Through the solidarity and commitment of many stakeholders – patients and families, healthcare professionals, researchers, companies, and policy makers – the awareness of the daily challenges that are unique to each rare disease and the efforts to create solutions has risen exponentially in the past several decades. As members of the rare disease community, we are proud of our collective accomplishments but remain acutely aware of how much more there is still to be done. Given how 2015 is already shaping up, we expect that by working together, we will continue to make great strides in developing much needed products for the millions of patients living with rare diseases.

Gayatri R. Rao, M.D., J.D., is FDA’s Director for The Office of Orphan Products Development

With recent record snowfalls in many parts of the country, the use of sunscreens may not have been on many people’s minds. But here at FDA, sunscreens have been a front-and-center issue.

On November 26, 2014, Congress enacted the Sunscreen Innovation Act (SIA) that provides a new process for the review of safety and effectiveness of nonprescription sunscreen active ingredients. Among other things, the SIA creates timelines for FDA review.

Before the law was enacted we followed the regulatory process known as the Time and Extent Applications process, or TEA process for sunscreen active ingredients. This regulatory process provides, among other things, a mechanism for sponsors to request that FDA evaluate active ingredients that are used in over-the-counter (OTC) drug products, particularly those marketed in other countries. The TEA process can be summarized in two basic steps. Step 1 is FDA’s determination of eligibility, made upon a showing that the ingredient has been marketed over-the-counter in one or more countries for a material time and extent. Step 2 is FDA’s evaluation of the data to determine whether the ingredient is generally recognized as safe and effective (GRASE) for its intended use in an OTC drug product as described in the relevant regulation. If, after review of the data, FDA ultimately finds the ingredient to be GRASE for its intended OTC use, the ingredient may enter the U.S. marketplace. There were eight TEAs for sunscreen ingredients submitted to FDA before the SIA went into effect.

On January 7, we met the first requirement of the SIA. In doing so, we announced our tentative determinations that six of these ingredients are not GRASE for use in sunscreens because we need more data from the manufacturers to help establish the safety and effectiveness of these products.

Today, we completed another requirement by taking initial action on the last two pending ingredients, ecamsule and enzacamene. We tentatively determined, as we had with the other six ingredients, that we need more data to decide if these ingredients are, in fact, GRASE for use in OTC sunscreen products. Information about the SIA and our recent actions under the law are available on our new web page for this topic.

At this time there is not enough generally available data to determine whether any of the ingredients under review meet FDA’s safety and effectiveness standards.

We know our careful actions to seek more information may be disappointing to some who would like to see additional sunscreen products on the market immediately, but I’d like to take this opportunity to clarify some misconceptions about the SIA and the process for making sunscreen ingredients available for use in OTC products marketed without individual premarket review in the U.S.:

The law does not change FDA’s standard for general recognition of safety and effectiveness.The SIA requires strict deadlines for FDA to take action on these ingredients, but it does not relax the FDA’s scientific standards for evaluating the ingredient’s safety and effectiveness, or our need for adequate data on which to base such determinations.

The law does not provide FDA with additional resources. Recognizing the public health importance of sunscreen use, the FDA is proceeding as quickly as practicable to meet the requirements of the legislation. To assist in this process and to reduce the negative impact on other work, FDA is requesting funds for implementation of the SIA as part of the President’s fiscal year (FY) 2016 budget.

The SIA does not guarantee that products with additional sunscreen ingredients will be on the market in a specified timeframe. Because additional data are needed for each of the eight sunscreen ingredients, timelines for FDA actions are triggered by industry’s submission of required data.

There is apparent confusion as to why ingredients that have been on the market for years in other countries cannot be used in the U.S. without further review by FDA. While information on marketing history in other countries is helpful, what we can learn from it is limited. For example, such information doesn’t tell us anything about the long-term effects from use of the ingredient or how much is absorbed. Because of the widespread daily use of sunscreen products by a broad population, including babies and pregnant women, FDA has proposed data requirements that will allow us to determine that sunscreen ingredients are generally recognized as safe and effective. These data requirements were unanimously supported by a panel of scientific experts at a recent public Advisory Committee meeting on sunscreens.

We cannot achieve success in bringing additional sunscreens to market on our own. FDA is committed to doing our best to meet the new statutory deadlines, and we will be transparent in our process and progress. Successful implementation of the SIA will require a cooperative effort with industry and other stakeholders. We look forward to continuing this important work.

Theresa M. Michele, M.D., is the Director of the Division of Nonprescription Drug Products in FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research’s Office of New Drugs

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the annual Woman’s Day Red Dress awards ceremony in New York City. The event is one of the highlights of American Heart Month, and it was created by that magazine to educate Americans about, and help fight, heart disease, which has become the number one killer of women. Many are surprised to learn that while breast cancer is the cause of death of one in every 31 American women, one of every three women dies of heart disease. So I found it particularly meaningful, both as a doctor and a woman, to be honored for FDA’s work to improve women’s cardiovascular health.

FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D., at the Woman’s Day Red Dress awards ceremony in New York City

One of our efforts toward this end that was cited by the magazine was the proposal to update the Nutrition Facts Label. The proposed updates would more prominently highlight calorie and serving size information, inform consumers about “added sugars,” update the daily values for nutrients, and ensure that the serving size requirements reflect the amounts of food people actually consume. They would encourage consumers to use the label to take note of foods high in sodium, saturated fat, and trans fat, which can increase the risk of coronary heart disease.

We also published final rules on restaurant menu and vending machine labeling. Calorie information is the key component of these requirements, and obesity is associated with a range of heart disease related problems. The new rules also require that other nutrition information, such as sodium, is provided upon the consumer’s request. High sodium intake can increase blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart disease. As with the nutrition facts label, these menu labeling requirements will give consumers nutrition information they need to be able to make healthy food choices for themselves and their families.

Another part of FDA that matters for cardiovascular health is our Center for Tobacco Products. Though its work is designed to protect the health of all Americans, it has special significance for women who, sadly, are catching up to men in the prevalence of tobacco-related diseases.

In the last 50 years, a woman’s risk of dying from smoking has more than tripled, and is now equal to that for men – not what we desire when we talk about equality. The more than 20 million women in the U.S. who smoke cigarettes are at risk not just for heart attacks, lung cancer, and strokes, but also emphysema and other serious chronic illnesses such as diabetes.

Our actions on smoking and nutrition have been complemented by the work of the Office of Women’s Health. Its outreach initiatives have helped provide women with tips and resources they can use to make better heart health decisions for themselves and their families. This Office has also supported research on treatment of heart disease in women.

FDA’s responsibilities also include reviewing, approving, and helping advance new and innovative medical products to diagnose, treat and prevent heart disease, including life-saving medical devices such as artificial hearts, stents, and heart valves, essential tests like echocardiograms, and important drugs for hypertension, lowering cholesterol and treating other aspects of cardiovascular disease.

Over the years, FDA’s support of women’s health has grown thanks to scientific advances, changes in society, and improvements in the agency itself. We will continue to promote these goals, not just in the area of cardiovascular health, but in women’s health more generally.

Of course, we can’t do it alone. And that’s why I sincerely welcome such events as the National Wear Red Day and Woman’s Day’s Red Dress awards. They help focus our nation’s attention and energy on the fight against women’s heart disease to which we, at FDA, are fully committed.

In recent weeks we’ve seen an alarming outbreak of measles; a highly contagious and serious virus, especially in babies and young children who have not been vaccinated. This outbreak is particularly disturbing because measles was effectively eliminated from the United States in 2000 thanks to nearly universal vaccination, the single best way to prevent the spread of this disease.

Vaccination works with the body’s natural defenses to help it safely develop immunity to the measles. When more people are vaccinated, there are fewer opportunities for the disease to spread. A community generally needs more than ninety per cent of its members to be immunized against the virus in order to protect those who can’t be.

Today, there are two safe and effective FDA-approved vaccines. More than 95% of the people who receive a single dose will develop immunity. And a second dose conveys immunity to nearly everyone who did not respond to the first dose. Simply put, these vaccines are safe and effective, and serious side effects are rare.

Before the first measles vaccine was approved in 1963, hundreds died from the disease each year. Others developed pneumonia, lifelong brain damage or deafness.

Let’s not return to these grim statistics. There is no shortage of measles vaccine. It should be used by everyone who has not been vaccinated to prevent measles and the potentially tragic consequences of the disease.

In my last blog post I discussed how FDA’s Technology Transfer program helps drive innovation by building collaborations that can solve today’s public health challenges using leading-edge science. This blog post describes one of those FDA collaborations—a pathogen detection network that is transforming food safety.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), foodborne disease outbreaks are responsible for about 48 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 3,000 deaths every year in the United States. The annual toll for Salmonella poisoning alone in this country is 1 million illnesses, 19,000 hospitalizations, and nearly 400 deaths. As the world becomes even more interconnected, FDA has recognized the urgency of creating new approaches and better tools to detect food contamination and stop outbreaks in their tracks.

The FDA-established GenomeTrakr is an innovative response to this global public health challenge. Using a cutting-edge technology called Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS), FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) and Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA) are collaborating with federal and state public health laboratories to build a publicly accessible genomic database called GenomeTrakr. GenomeTrakr enables us to compare some of the bacterial pathogens that cause foodborne diseases and trace them back to their sources faster and more precisely than traditional methods.

WGS is a laboratory process that identifies the complete DNA sequence of an organism’s genetic material at a single time. The process is being used together with GenomeTrakr to identify pathogens isolated from food or environmental samples and compare them to pathogens isolated from sick patients. If the isolates from food or environmental samples match the pathogens taken from the sick patients, scientists can establish a reliable link that helps characterize the size and location of the foodborne disease outbreak. It can even help public health officials determine which ingredient in a multi-ingredient food is causing the outbreak—so that we can get contaminated food out of the food supply. Used by epidemiologists in combination with traditional methods, WGS is advancing our understanding of contaminations in the food supply.

Pathogens evolve very quickly and have thousands of genetic variations. After spending time in a particular geographic location, a pathogen like Salmonella begins to acquire unique genetic signatures that identify it as coming from that location. Until recently, some strains of Salmonella have looked much the same to us, no matter where we found them, because some of the older methods of testing have been unable to distinguish between certain strains of pathogens. But WGS can detect unique signatures within and between species with far greater precision than previous methods, which makes it one of our biggest secret weapons in tackling foodborne illness outbreaks.

FDA scientists and our collaborators in federal and state public health laboratories are using WGS and the GenomeTrakr database to identify those unique signatures. The signatures can often tell us, for example, if a Salmonella that has contaminated a certain part of the food supply is from the U.S. West Coast, New England, or even Germany. FDA and state lab scientists upload the entire genome sequence for a pathogen into the GenomeTrakr database at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, where it’s available for further use. As the database continues to grow, it’s becoming an increasingly powerful tool to help investigations home in faster on the root causes of outbreaks and track their location.

The potential of technologies like WGS to enhance food safety could not be realized without the development of a powerful database like GenomeTrakr. But to build that kind of database FDA needed to form a web of collaborations. Enter FDA’s Technology Transfer team. It plays a critical role in working with our researchers to create the successful relationships that make huge databases like GenomeTrakr work.

To achieve CFSAN’s vision, FDA’s Technology Transfer team worked with CFSAN researchers to create agreements tailored to the project’s needs. The team drafted collaboration agreements that included provisions for establishing relationships between FDA and state laboratories to perform WGS and upload genome sequences into GenomeTrakr. Once CFSAN’s project concept and goals were established, Technology Transfer experts negotiated and put agreements in place so FDA could begin linking federal and state partners to advance the use of WGS across public health.

Since the first state public health lab collaboration was established in February 2012, FDA, along with other international, federal, and state laboratories have added genome sequences for more than 11,000 isolates to the GenomeTrakr database, and we are already seeing impressive results! In early 2014, through a partnership with CDC, FDA and state department of health laboratories used GenomeTrakr to match environmental and food samples with human biological samples, which helped FDA confirm the source of Listeria in an outbreak.

This collaboration is just one of many that our Technology Transfer team has helped create to support FDA efforts to speed innovation in public health. Stay tuned for my next post, where I’ll discuss an FDA invention that is preventing hundreds of thousands of Africans from contracting the debilitating disease of Meningitis.

FDA oversees products that represent more than 20 cents of every dollar that American consumers spend. Today, FDA presented its FY 2016 budget to Congress.This sensible budget request will help ensure that FDA can continue to fulfill its vast responsibilities to protect the public health, safety, and quality of life of the American public.

I want to share the cover letter that I wrote to Congress outlining some of our specific proposals.

FDA fulfills its important mission to promote and protect health in an increasingly complex and globalized world in many ways. The scope of our work includes assuring that foods are safe, wholesome, sanitary and properly labeled; ensuring that human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and other biological products, and medical devices intended for human use are safe and effective; and regulating tobacco products. We also play a lead role in protecting the public from electronic product radiation and assuring that cosmetics and dietary supplements are safe and properly labeled. Finally, we have devoted – and will continue to devote – substantial resources to advancing the public health by helping to speed product innovations.

FDA’s responsibilities continue to expand as we work to fulfill the mandates of groundbreaking legislation passed in recent years, including the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) of 2011, the FDA Safety and Innovation Act (FDASIA) of 2012, and the Drug Quality and Security Act of 2013. Further, with so many FDA-regulated products manufactured in whole or in part outside of our borders, FDA is keenly focused on the complexities of regulating in a global marketplace.

In FY 2014, we took important steps to finalize a key set of proposed food safety rules; worked to improve the safety of compounded pharmaceutical products by conducting more than 90 inspections and implementing compounding legislation through proposed regulations, guidances, and other actions; published the “deeming rule” to extend FDA’s tobacco authority; and collaborated with federal, international, and industry partners to expedite the development and availability of medical products. In addition, FDA has worked intensively to respond to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa by facilitating the development and availability of investigational diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines with the potential to help combat the epidemic.

FDA continues to seek new ways to obtain the most public health value for the federal dollar as we implement expanded authorities. The products that FDA regulates are essential to public health, safety, and quality of life and represent over 20 cents of every consumer dollar spent on products in the United States. Yet, in terms of our FDA budget, each American taxpayer contributes approximately $8 per year for the vast array of protections and services provided by FDA.

In FY 2016, we are requesting essential and timely resources to address critical food and medical product safety issues. Mindful of the fiscal environment, we have identified targeted reductions where possible and identified long-term needs for additional user fees to balance budget authority growth. FDA is requesting a total of $4.9 billion to support our various mandates to protect the American people. This includes a $148 million budget authority increase to focus on the following:

delivering a farm-to-table system of prevention, including improved oversight of imported foods, through effectively implementing the final rules required by FSMA;

combating the growing threat of antibiotic resistance – in which drugs become less effective, or ineffective, against harmful bacteria;

promoting the development and appropriate use of reliable molecular and genetic diagnostics – precision medicine tools – to “personalize” the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease;

As a science-based regulatory agency with a public health mission, FDA plays a unique and essential role in promoting and protecting public health and safety. We are committed to meeting the needs and expectations of the American people.

On World AIDS Day this year, tens of millions of people with HIV are now living healthy, productive lives because of access to safe and lower priced medicines. We rejoice in this achievement, because all people, no matter how rich or poor, deserve to have the medicines they need to live their lives in the best health possible.

We can truly see in our future an AIDS-Free generation because of the wide availability of prevention and treatment tools. But the availability of these drugs and diagnostic tools, especially in Africa, was never a given. Ten years ago, in 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) committed to support the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) by introducing an expedited review process to make generic and low-cost treatment more readily available for the most affected countries. PEPFAR requires antiretroviral drugs to be safe, effective, and of high quality and supports their distribution to people needing treatment around the globe. But meeting these requirements can be costly and time-consuming. Those suffering from AIDS cannot wait. The FDA, an agency that is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), applied the tentative approval process in order to increase dramatically the number of products approved for purchase and distribution by PEPFAR.

Thanks to the commitment of FDA scientists, as of today FDA has issued expedited approval decisions for 179 products, including 39 formulations specifically designed for children that allow flexible dosing across multiple weight bands and many innovative formulations, such as fixed-dose combinations and co-packaged products that improve adherence to treatment and reduce the risk of developing resistance. The 179 tentative approvals allowed PEPFAR to purchase products at a lower cost, leading to cost savings of hundreds of millions of dollars. These savings contributed to additional patients being able to receive treatment.

According to UNAIDS, by June 2014, 13.6 million people around the world had access to antiretroviral therapy. This is an important success, but many more people still need access.

Unfortunately, too many countries lack the regulatory capacity to conduct product registrations in a timely manner. This makes it difficult for these countries to provide high-quality rapid HIV tests and treatment.

The FDA and the HHS have been working with the Department of State Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator (S/GAC); the World Health Organization; the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria; and other organizations to help countries build both their health care systems and regulatory capacities.

Importantly, FDA has partnered with host country health ministries to help strengthen regulatory capacities in support of their public health programs. PEPFAR recently contributed $1.5 million in support of this FDA partnership to further regulatory system strengthening in the East African community.

With these improvements, countries battling HIV and AIDS can build the systems necessary to ensure that patients get the high-quality treatment they need, which one day will lead to the realization of an AIDS-free generation.

Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D., is the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration

Jimmy Kolker is Assistant Secretary for Global Affairs in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

The tragic Ebola epidemic is an extraordinary global public health crisis, and FDA is taking extraordinary steps to be proactive and flexible in our response – whether it’s providing advice on medical product development, authorizing the emergency use of new diagnostic tools, quickly enabling access to investigational therapies, or working on the front lines in West Africa.

FDA has an Ebola Task Force with wide representation from across FDA to coordinate our many activities. We are actively working with federal colleagues, the medical and scientific community, industry, and international organizations and regulators to help expedite the development and availability of medical products – such as treatments, vaccines, diagnostic tests, and personal protective equipment – with the potential to help bring the epidemic under control as quickly as possible.

These efforts include providing scientific and regulatory advice to commercial developers and U.S. government agencies that support medical product development, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Department of Defense (DoD). The advice that FDA is providing is helping to accelerate product development programs.

Our medical product reviewers have been working tirelessly with sponsors to clarify regulatory requirements, provide input on manufacturing and pre-clinical and clinical trial designs, and expedite the regulatory review of data as it is received. FDA has been in contact with dozens of drug, vaccine, device, and diagnostic test developers, and we remain in contact with more than 20 sponsors that have possible products in pipeline.

We also have been collaborating with the World Health Organization and other international regulatory counterparts—including the European Medicines Agency, Health Canada, and others—to exchange information about investigational products for Ebola in support of international response efforts.

Investigational vaccines and treatments for Ebola are in the earliest stages of development and for most, there are only small amounts of some experimental products that have been manufactured for testing. For those in limited supply, there are efforts underway to increase their production so their safety and efficacy can be properly assessed in clinical trials.

As FDA continues to work to expedite medical product development, we strongly support the establishment of clinical trials, which is the most efficient way to show whether these new products actually work. In the meantime, we also will continue to enable access to investigational products when they are available and requested by clinicians, using expanded access mechanisms, also known as “compassionate use,” which allow access to such products outside of clinical trials when we assess that the expected benefits outweigh the potential risks for the patient.

In addition, under the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) authority, we can allow the use of an unapproved medical product—or an unapproved use of an approved medical product—for a larger population during emergencies, when, among other reasons, based on scientific evidence available, there is no adequate, approved, and available alternative. To date, FDA has authorized the use of five diagnostic tests during this Ebola epidemic: one was developed by DoD, two were developed by CDC, and this week FDA issued EUAs for two new, quicker Ebola tests made by BioFire Defense.

To further augment diagnostic capacity, we have contacted several commercial developers that we know are capable of developing rapid diagnostic tests and have encouraged them to work with us to quickly develop and make available such tests. Several entities have expressed interest and have initiated discussions with FDA.

We also are monitoring for fraudulent products and false product claims related to the Ebola virus and taking appropriate action to protect consumers. To date, we have issued warning letters to three companies marketing products that claim to prevent, treat or cure infection by the Ebola virus, among other conditions. Additionally, we are carefully monitoring the personal protective equipment (PPE) supply chain to help ensure this essential equipment continues to be available to protect health care workers.

And at least 12 FDA employees are being deployed to West Africa as part of the Public Health Service’s team to help with medical care. We are proud that they are answering the call.

As you can see, FDA has been fully engaged in response activities and is using its authorities to the fullest extent possible to continue its mission to protect and promote the public health, both domestically and abroad. Our staff is fully committed to responding in the most proactive, thoughtful, and flexible manner to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

I could not be more proud of the dedication and leadership that the FDA staff involved in this response has shown. I therefore want to take this opportunity to thank more than 250 staff, including those soon to be on the ground in West Africa, who have already contributed countless hours to this important effort, and who will continue to do so in the coming days and weeks as we address this very serious situation. I am hopeful that our work and the coordinated global response will soon lead to the end of this epidemic and help reduce the risk of additional cases in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D., is Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration

Over the last year, a group of senior FDA leaders, under my direction, were tasked to develop plans to modify FDA’s functions and processes in order to address new regulatory challenges. Among these challenges are: the increasing breadth and complexity of FDA’s mandate; the impact of globalization on the food and medical product supply chains; and the ongoing trend of rapid scientific innovation and increased biomedical discovery.

The Directorates, Centers and the Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA) have collaborated closely to define the changes needed to align ourselves more strategically and operationally and meet the greater demands placed on the agency. As a result, each regulatory program has established detailed action plans. Specifically, each plan describes the steps in transitioning to commodity-based and vertically-integrated regulatory programs in the following areas: human and veterinary drugs; biological products; medical devices and radiological health; bioresearch monitoring (BIMO); food and feed; and tobacco.

These action plans focus on what will be accomplished in FY 2015 and outline the need to develop detailed future plans for the next five years in some cases. The plans represent what each Center and ORA have agreed are the critical actions to jointly fulfill FDA’s mission in the key areas of specialization, training, work planning, compliance policy and enforcement strategy, imports, laboratory optimization, and information technology.

Because each Center has a unique regulatory program to manage, there are understandably variations among the plans. However, there are also common features across most of the plans: the need to define specialization across our inspection and compliance functions; to identify competencies in these areas of specialization and develop appropriate training curricula; to develop risk-based work planning that is aligned with program priorities and improves accountability; and to develop clear and current compliance policies and enforcement strategies.

Below are some highlights from the plans that illustrate these features:

Establish Senior Executive Program Directors in ORA. In the past, for example, the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) would work with several ORA units responsible for the pharmaceutical program. Now, the Centers will have a single Senior Executive in ORA responsible for each commodity program, allowing ORA and the Centers to resolve matters more efficiently.

Jointly develop new inspection approaches. The Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) and ORA plan, for example, will begin to focus some inspections on characteristics and features of medical devices most critical to patient safety and device effectiveness. ORA investigators will perform these inspections utilizing jointly developed training.

Invest in expanded training across ORA and the Centers. The Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) and ORA will jointly develop a biologics training curriculum, redesign investigator certification, and cross-train Center and ORA investigators, compliance officers and managers.

Expand compliance tools. Field investigators will be teamed with subject matter experts from the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition and the Center for Veterinary Medicine to make decisions in real time, working with firms to achieve prompt correction of food safety deficiencies and to help implement the preventive approaches outlined by the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). If industry does not quickly and adequately correct critical areas of noncompliance that could ultimately result in food borne outbreaks, we will use our enforcement tools, including those provided under FSMA, as appropriate.

Optimize FDA laboratories. ORA and the various Centers will establish a multi-year strategic plan for ORA scientific laboratory work, including hiring and training analysts, purchasing and using equipment, and allocating resources and facilities. At the same time, ORA is committed to conducting an ongoing review of its labs to ensure that they are properly managed and operating as efficiently as possible.

Create specialized investigators, compliance officers, and first-line managers. A bioresearch monitoring (BIMO) working group is developing a plan for a dedicated corps of ORA investigators to conduct BIMO inspections, and a dedicated cadre of tobacco investigators is being established.

Working together to implement these action plans will take time, commitment, and continued investment and we’ll need to monitor and evaluate our efforts. These plans will help us implement the new FSMA rules announced in September, as well as the Agency’s new medical product quality initiatives under the FDA Safety and Innovation Act and Drug Quality and Security Act.

FDA’s Program Alignment is a well-thought out approach that responds to the needs of a changing world. I look forward to the ways in which these action plans will ultimately enhance the FDA’s public health and regulatory mission.

Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D., is Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

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